The efforts of the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences concerning the scientific and sociological meanings of race in America were concluded in the final report of the ...
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The efforts of the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences concerning the scientific and sociological meanings of race in America were concluded in the final report of the Joint Commission on Racial Problems. Committee chairman Robert S. Woodworth outlined a plan to build racial orphanages to study the psychological, sociological, and biological interpretations of race in controlled environments. This chapter demonstrates how the NRC became an ideal institution for the large-scale studies that would be proposed through its committees on race. The committee's work reflects a growing agreement among scientists that genetics and biology could be used to evaluate prevailing social ideas about difference. Its research follows a eugenic paradigm for racial studies, suggesting that eugenic ideas were almost similar to mainstream studies of race.Less

The National Research Council and the Scientific Study of Race

Michael YudellJ. Craig Venter

Published in print: 2014-09-09

The efforts of the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences concerning the scientific and sociological meanings of race in America were concluded in the final report of the Joint Commission on Racial Problems. Committee chairman Robert S. Woodworth outlined a plan to build racial orphanages to study the psychological, sociological, and biological interpretations of race in controlled environments. This chapter demonstrates how the NRC became an ideal institution for the large-scale studies that would be proposed through its committees on race. The committee's work reflects a growing agreement among scientists that genetics and biology could be used to evaluate prevailing social ideas about difference. Its research follows a eugenic paradigm for racial studies, suggesting that eugenic ideas were almost similar to mainstream studies of race.

Between 1914 and 1918, German anthropologists conducted their work in the midst of full-scale war. The discipline was relatively new in German academia when World War I broke out, and, as this book ...
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Between 1914 and 1918, German anthropologists conducted their work in the midst of full-scale war. The discipline was relatively new in German academia when World War I broke out, and, as this book reveals, its development was profoundly altered by the conflict. As the war shaped the institutional, ideological, and physical environment for anthropological work, the discipline turned its back on its liberal roots and became a nationalist endeavor primarily concerned with scientific studies of race. Combining intellectual and cultural history with the history of science, this book examines both the origins and consequences of this shift. Evans locates its roots in the decision to allow scientists access to prisoner-of-war camps, which prompted them to focus their research on racial studies of the captives. Caught up in wartime nationalism, a new generation of anthropologists began to portray the country's political enemies as racially different. After the war ended, the importance placed on racial conceptions and categories persisted, paving the way for the politicization of scientific inquiry in the years of the ascendancy of National Socialism.Less

Anthropology at War : World War I and the Science of Race in Germany

Andrew D. Evans

Published in print: 2010-09-15

Between 1914 and 1918, German anthropologists conducted their work in the midst of full-scale war. The discipline was relatively new in German academia when World War I broke out, and, as this book reveals, its development was profoundly altered by the conflict. As the war shaped the institutional, ideological, and physical environment for anthropological work, the discipline turned its back on its liberal roots and became a nationalist endeavor primarily concerned with scientific studies of race. Combining intellectual and cultural history with the history of science, this book examines both the origins and consequences of this shift. Evans locates its roots in the decision to allow scientists access to prisoner-of-war camps, which prompted them to focus their research on racial studies of the captives. Caught up in wartime nationalism, a new generation of anthropologists began to portray the country's political enemies as racially different. After the war ended, the importance placed on racial conceptions and categories persisted, paving the way for the politicization of scientific inquiry in the years of the ascendancy of National Socialism.

Chapter four argues that emasculation was central to scientific and popular discourse on lynching as well as its practice. For three decades, prominent U.S. physicians recommended surgical castration ...
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Chapter four argues that emasculation was central to scientific and popular discourse on lynching as well as its practice. For three decades, prominent U.S. physicians recommended surgical castration as an alternative to lynch violence. They lent scientific support for the "black rapist" trope, but positioned themselves as progressive reformers offering a medical solution.Less

Unsexing the Race : Lynching, Castration, and Racial Science

Melissa N. Stein

Published in print: 2015-09-01

Chapter four argues that emasculation was central to scientific and popular discourse on lynching as well as its practice. For three decades, prominent U.S. physicians recommended surgical castration as an alternative to lynch violence. They lent scientific support for the "black rapist" trope, but positioned themselves as progressive reformers offering a medical solution.

This chapter introduces the main themes of the book. It notes that, since the 1980s, there has been a crisis of anti-racist theory and practice. It also notes that sectarianism in Northern Ireland ...
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This chapter introduces the main themes of the book. It notes that, since the 1980s, there has been a crisis of anti-racist theory and practice. It also notes that sectarianism in Northern Ireland has been largely excluded from attempts to rethink anti-racism. The chapter argues that, as part of the attempt to rethink anti-racism, there is a need to clear up confusions. The author suggests that the contradictory uses of ‘race’ and ethnicity is one of the key confusions in the literature on racism and anti-racism.Less

Introduction

Chris Gilligan

Published in print: 2017-08-30

This chapter introduces the main themes of the book. It notes that, since the 1980s, there has been a crisis of anti-racist theory and practice. It also notes that sectarianism in Northern Ireland has been largely excluded from attempts to rethink anti-racism. The chapter argues that, as part of the attempt to rethink anti-racism, there is a need to clear up confusions. The author suggests that the contradictory uses of ‘race’ and ethnicity is one of the key confusions in the literature on racism and anti-racism.

This chapter explores three of the most influential parental memoirs of adoption from the former Soviet Union—Margaret L. Schwartz’s The Pumpkin Patch (2005), Theresa Reid’s Two Little Girls (2007), ...
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This chapter explores three of the most influential parental memoirs of adoption from the former Soviet Union—Margaret L. Schwartz’s The Pumpkin Patch (2005), Theresa Reid’s Two Little Girls (2007), and Brooks Hansen’s The Brotherhood of Joseph (2008)—to complement scholarship on transnational adoption that has focused on questions of race for adoptions from China and Korea, while emphasizing adoption failures for Eastern European adoptees. In these memoirs, parents explicitly eschew the traditional humanitarian narrative of adoption and portray themselves as neoliberal consumers who have the right to select healthy white children from the international adoption market in order to forge families whose members look as though they could be biologically related. While the authors’ belief that they share a preexisting racial identity with post-Soviet children grants them immense privileges, it also subjects adoptees to unrealistic expectations of their complete assimilation that ignore the conditions for the children’s relinquishment and displacement from their birth countries, languages, and cultures. The belief that US adoptive parents share a racial identity with children in the former East Bloc not only turns them into preferred commodities but also renders them particularly vulnerable to rejections or adoption disruptions, which may help explain the significant numbers of abuse and death cases of post-Soviet adoptees at the hands of their US parents. Less

The Desire for Adoptive Invisibility

Claudia Sadowski-Smith

Published in print: 2018-03-13

This chapter explores three of the most influential parental memoirs of adoption from the former Soviet Union—Margaret L. Schwartz’s The Pumpkin Patch (2005), Theresa Reid’s Two Little Girls (2007), and Brooks Hansen’s The Brotherhood of Joseph (2008)—to complement scholarship on transnational adoption that has focused on questions of race for adoptions from China and Korea, while emphasizing adoption failures for Eastern European adoptees. In these memoirs, parents explicitly eschew the traditional humanitarian narrative of adoption and portray themselves as neoliberal consumers who have the right to select healthy white children from the international adoption market in order to forge families whose members look as though they could be biologically related. While the authors’ belief that they share a preexisting racial identity with post-Soviet children grants them immense privileges, it also subjects adoptees to unrealistic expectations of their complete assimilation that ignore the conditions for the children’s relinquishment and displacement from their birth countries, languages, and cultures. The belief that US adoptive parents share a racial identity with children in the former East Bloc not only turns them into preferred commodities but also renders them particularly vulnerable to rejections or adoption disruptions, which may help explain the significant numbers of abuse and death cases of post-Soviet adoptees at the hands of their US parents.